Talented person. Shes a little shy but thats okay. The people call hope hicks to the witness stand. Donald trump made sure he was easy talking to todd blanche and hope hicks very deliberately avoided any regard , any look at him. Tonight, gripping testimony from a trump insider on the trump campaigns attempt to catch and kill. Suddenly, she just started crying. It felt like a confession she had come forward and said this. What the jury heard about campaign panic over Access Hollywood. I said it, i was wrong and i apologize. Then new reporting on how to project a second trump term and how to predict trumps second pick for vp. Kristi noem is a little too based, shooting the puppy. Your ghostwriter must really not like you if they include that one. That was rough. All in starts right now. Good evening from new york, and chris hayes. Today, we heard the most colorful, explosive testimony yet in the trial of donald trump. It came from one of the prosecutions star witnesses, one of the people closest to compton the 2016 campaign, his press secretary, hope hicks. Prosecutors laid out in the very first sentences of their Opening Statement when the trial began, this case is about donald trump vision of a criminal scheme to correct the 2016 president ial election. They described as a conspiracy to influence the election by concealing negative information about mr. Trump in order to help get him elected. What are they arguing . It is that Donald Trumps motive for committing the 34 counts of falsifying Business Records from it was to win the white house. The prosecutors are showing the jury the crime of falsified records stemmed from a key moment in the president ial campaign. It was just one month before the election when the Washington Post published the access Hollywood Video capturing trump on a hot Microphone Bragging about sexual assault. The release of that video, if you recall, and it has been a memory hole, nearly brought down trumps campaign. Republicans across the country came out of the woodwork to rebuke them, withdrawing their support. There were numerous calls for trump to drop out of the race. The Republican NationalCommittee Even considered replacing him with his running mate, mike pence. He was hanging on by his fingernails. One more blow could have been the end of the trump candidacy. One of the great but if counterfactuals in american history. That was the moment the prosecution brought the jury back to today with the person who was in the center of the storm, hope hicks. When hope hicks took the stand, she confessed to being really nervous explained she had not seen or spoken to her former boss since 2022. Hope hicks testified she first learned about the access Hollywood Tape from a Washington Post reporter requesting comment and was stunned, when she heard it. She believed it was going to be a huge story that would dominate the news cycle for at least the next several days. at a Damaging Development for the campaign that was going to be hard to overcome. There was consensus among us all this was going to be a crisis. The coverage was so intense it just a Natural Disaster out of the news cycle. We were anticipating a category 4 hurricane around that time and no one remembers it because it was all trump in the news. I saw that today when i was reading through the transcripts of the Court Reporting and i said that is true, i dont remember. Just weeks later, hope hicks learned the Wall Street Journal, was planning to publish this article about the very catch and kill scheme that is the subject of this indictment to purchase playboy model Karen Mcdougal story about an affair with trump. The article mentions Stormy Daniels and her interest in reviewing her story about her relationship with trump. Hope hicks testified she went to jared kushner, hoping he could get in touch with executives at the journal to delay publication, itself an interesting thing. When that didnt work, she and trump fixer Michael Cohen crafted a statement in response to the article. She recalled trump had input on the statement, which was a full throated denial. That, he asked for the addition of the Wall Street Journal featuring that very story not to be delivered to his residence where his wife lived. Now, the leader portion of the testimony focused on her reflections about Michael Cohen she said Michael Cohen told her he made 130,000. 00 payment to Stormy Daniels to protect trump from false allegations and did it out of the goodness of his heart. Hope hicks explained, i would say that would be out of character for michael. I did not know michael to be a charitable or selfless person. He is the kind of person who seeks credit. During Cross Examination by trump lawyer emil bove , she went on to say that Michael Cohen liked to call himself a fixer. It was only because he first broke it. So it was another tough day for the former president although he did manage to fit in some rest for what he calls his beautiful blue eyes while his former close aide testified against him. He let out anger in another rant against the judge. The judge is highly conflicted. He should not be allowed to be the judge of this case. He has tried to make it as salacious as possible by allowing testimony that has nothing to do with the case. He wants to make it a salacious case, try and hurt trump but its having the opposite effect, i think. We will see. The poll numbers are higher than they have ever been. And, that is the story. He is allowing things in that have nothing to do with this case, nothing to do with it. Poll numbers are not higher than they have ever been. The Polling Average is neck and neck. Nothing the judge is doing, just to be clear, is making this case against trump salacious. What is salacious is what actually happened, which is the subject of the criminal indictment. Where in donald trump directed his effexor to pay off a star so he could win the election. She has extensively covered hope hicks over the years. Kristy greenberg is a former beauty chief for the u. S. Attorneys office in the Southern District of new york. They both join me now. Great to have you here. Let me start with you because you were at the courthouse and walked in adult onset and you were like what a day. It felt, we are reading this in real time for people in the room, we dont have cameras. We dont have a transcript but it felt that way getting the text dispatches. What was it like in that building . It was incredibly powerful testimony from hope hicks because before she even got to the meat of it, she had said so many nice things about donald trump to start. Hes a master at branding, he knows communications. A lot of really obsequious comments in showing that she still cares for the. Then when she starts making these statements that are damaging to the case for the defense, it has that much more power. She is not the Sleaze Ball Lawyer who has the sleazy Tabloid Clients or the tabloid journalist. Shes somebody who cared about him and yet she is just, you know, there was a nail in the coffin and where in 2018, there is a conversation that it is just her and trump. Is the president of the United States at this point. She is working for him in the white house. Yes and Michael Cohen has gone to the New York Times and said i made this payment to Stormy Daniels. And donald trump says well, this would have been damaging if it had come out during the campaign and it is good it is coming out now and then. That was the last question from the executor. It was just a Microphone Drop moment. Jawdropping moment that she had said that. So, it was incredibly powerful. To follow up on that, she started crying after she said that. All the tension in her gets released that limit. Exactly. At that point, she, the Cross Examination starts. Theres a question or two about when did you start working with the Trump Organization and that is when she starts crying. At least watching it, it did not seem like that was the question that made her cry. I think it was the fact that she knew she dropped this bomb and that the weight of that really and that release, as you say, you could just see it in her expression. You have covered hope hicks for a long time. How central was she to the operation, how crucial a witness is she in this Case Question she was in proximity and in every other way, as close as you could get to that family without having a last name trump. She was much closer to donald trump a lot of his own children. Referring to tiffany. She was a lot closer than a lot of the children. She was around all the time. She started at the Trump Organization and became very close to ivanka and built her reputation in the family. She found herself in this dark sitcom, donald trump said we are going to iowa and she said what do people where in iowa . She did not intend to work on the president ial campaign and did not intend to work at a white horse. It is not her dream and she ended up there in this incredibly toxic, ultimately violent environment and saw a lot and has a near photographic memory, even if that did not always come through in her testimony. I think it was probably very hard for trump, if he has emotions, to see her in that position. Shes not Michael Cohen. Lawrence said this when we played the open, there was avoidance of eye contact. She said she hadnt talked to him since 2022. It seems to me that there are two key parts of the prosecutions case that hope hicks helps prosecution with. One is was this about the campaign . That is key to the motive. The other was was this being done by other people or date trump have a role . My understanding is the testimony spoke to both of those but on the second can you talk about the first one, on the second one, it is pretty clear from her testimony at least according to her that he was involved, this was not an Off Book Operation Freelanced by Michael Cohen. She talks about the fact that when the injury first comes in before the Wall Street Journal publishes that the National Enquirer is trying to squash this story about Karen Mcdougal, when that inquiry first comes in, donald trump goes to hope hicks and says what did david pecker tell you . That is significant because he wants to make sure that david pecker is sticking to the story. This was a legitimate business contract, we wanted her on the magazine cover, we wanted to make sure that she , he wanted to make sure that the contract, which just says this was a legitimate business opportunity, promotional opportunity, that david pecker was telling the story because hope hicks is in the dark and then after the article is published, the Wall Street Journal article, after this is published, this is a few days before the election, november 4th 2016, after the article was published, what does donald trump say to hope hicks . How is it playing . That is what he would say whatever he wanted to find out how something was being received in the past. Again, related to the election. Now, she also testified, as you mentioned at the opening, maybe make sure the newspaper doesnt go to melania. You can have both purposes so long as the campaign is front and center, which it clearly was and which hope hicks testified that it was. His focus was also on getting david phone number after the article came out. He asked hope hicks, give me david phone number and then afterwards says its all good. We talked, its all fine. Its all good, which is what david pecker testified. This collaboration of what we have already heard from from david pecker showing donald trump is right in the center of this. And hope hicks, part of what was fascinating to me again as i was reading this through our internal slack channel, it was a reminder of the sheer chaos and crisis and almost Tipping Point moment of the access Hollywood Tape and the fact that that article that does come out before the election ultimately ends up spaced out in of that it wouldnt, like if that had come out the day after Access Hollywood or two days after or three days after, that could have been it. You were there covering it, that could have been it. They got lucky with the timing of that. Also, remember at that time, it is easy to forget, i have repressed a lot of it, i think most americans have, it was one allegation after another. It was more than two dozen allegations that he had some sort of sexual impropriety and it was just one thing after another. They are running against hillary clinton, it is not like they think they are going to do well with women voters overall but it is this sort of torrent of negative information and this is yet another thing. Let me ask you about the moment when hope hicks cried. I understand you have been doing some reporting about that. My understanding was she did not want to testify. She was compelled to testify. It is not as though she raised her hand and said yes, i want to help ruin Donald Trumps life. This is the one who has been important to her, even if she does maintain very complicated, conflicted feelings about him. My understanding was that being asked about the opportunities that he had given her in her life brought all of that back and made her very emotional, that it was not a direct response to the realization. That is how the cross started, which is kind of like twisting the knife. This guy that gave you everything, you are up here testifying against him. Olivia, great to have you. Kristy greenberg will stay with us for the next block. We will go through the salacious testimony and the latest on trumps gag order and his misunderstanding of it. Thats next. Thats next. I recommend prevagen. Number one, because its effective. Does not require a prescription. And ive been taking it quite a while myself and i know it works. And i love it when the customers come back in and tell me, david, that really works so good for me. Makes my day. Prevagen. At stores everywhere without a prescription. Auntie, you cant put that right in the dishwasher. Watch me. 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